A wide range of wheelchairs are currently available, each type of wheelchair having characteristics which make it suitable for a given application. One type of wheelchair, commonly referred to as an indoor chair, has a seat arranged to place the occupant in an upright seated position, for instance to enable the occupant to eat at a dining table, or work at an office desk or use a computer. The indoor chair, being used in confined indoor environments such as offices and homes, must have dimensions to enable the chair to negotiate doorways, corridors, and tight indoor spaces. Consequently, the wheelbase of such indoor chairs, being the distance between a front wheel axis and a rear wheel axis, is made short to provide a manoeuvrable wheelchair which can be turned within a small floor space. However, such a short wheelbase leads to directional instability should such a wheelchair be used at speed, and so manoeuvrable wheelchairs are unsuited for travel over distance.
A second type of wheelchair, commonly referred to as an outdoor wheelchair or a travel wheelchair, has a wheelbase which is significantly longer than that of manoeuvrable wheelchairs, in order to avoid or minimise the directional instability associated with short wheelbase wheelchairs used at speed. Consequently, travel wheelchairs require a large footprint for turning which makes them unsuitable for use in confined indoor environments. Further, travel wheelchairs have a seat arranged to place the occupant in an upright seated position, such a posture being required at the destination. Some travel wheelchairs provide for the seat to be set to a user-selected partially reclined position upon delivery. Further travel wheelchairs provide for reclining positions to be selected or altered during use, however such chairs raise the occupant's centre of gravity during such reclining, thus decreasing the stability of the wheelchair at speed or on uneven ground.
With these and other wheelchairs being applicable to only a subset of activities undertaken by a user, many wheelchair users obtain more than one wheelchair so that a suitable wheelchair is available for each situation encountered by the user in day to day use. Consequently, wheelchair users are faced with the costs of obtaining and maintaining multiple wheelchairs, the need for the user to regularly transfer from one wheelchair to another, and the burden of carrying those unused wheelchairs with them for future use.
Throughout this specification the word “comprise”, or variations such as “comprises” or “comprising”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps, but not the exclusion of any other element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps.
Any discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles or the like which has been included in the present specification is solely for the purpose of providing a context for the present invention. It is not to be taken as an admission that any or all of these matters form part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present invention as it existed before the priority date of each claim of this application.